Pope laments ‘black-and-white’ mentality in priest-confessors

[Canon212: Pope Francis says: “TOO MANY SEMINARIES TEACH CLEAR IDEAS AND DISTINCT RULES. THOSE HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH CONCRETE REALITY, OK?!” Ergo, “Priests must be taught to see shades of gray.” – Crux]

Catholic World News – August 25, 2016

Priests should be trained to recognize nuances in their work as confessors, Pope Francis said to a group of Polish Jesuits during his visit there.

The Pope said that “many people leave the confessional disappointed” because the priest lacks understanding. He said that many priests have been trained “in the light of overly clear and distinct ideas, and therefore to act within limits and criteria that are rigidly defined in advance and that set aside concrete situations.”

This approach is wrong, the Pontiff said. “The shades of gray prevail in life. We must teach [priests] to discern in this gray area.”

The Pope offered these thoughts to an audience of Jesuits during his visit to Poland. The remarks were made public in the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, by the editor, Father Antonio Spadaro, who was present for the talk.

It is obvious to me that Satan sees in this current pope the opportunity to create mischief and to sow the seeds of doubt among the Faithful. There is one person on the sidelines by his own choice who could change things but he, too, is part of the modernist cabal that gaves us Begoglio. His name? Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and I use his title as Cardinal intentionally because if he still considers himself part of the papacy, he had better rise up and change things before he meets His Maker.

I’ve said this before, but I really don’t care what these apostates and heretics running the conciliar religion do.
As long as they leave me and other Catholics alone I don’t care.
Does it bother me as a Catholic? Yes
Do I wish we had Catholics in Rome running the Church? Yes
But barring Divine intervention it’s going to take centuries IMO before the Church is back to normal.
I’m not a BLEEP.
These clowns are/were legitimately elected but they are IMO heretics and apostates by their words and actions, and are no disciples of Our Lord, His teachings and His Catholic Church.
Jorge Bergoglio is the bottom of the barrel, and the natural result of over sixty years of modernism, relativism and liberal thought inside (and outside) the Church.
Yet the other conciliar popes are/were modernists too. Just not as blatant about it in certain situations as Bergoglio.
The best thing to do IMO is to stay away from these people, pray for them and for their conversion but all I ask is that they leave practicing Catholics alone.
If they do that, I’ll be content.

During World Youth Day last month in Krakow, the pope conferred with 28 Polish Jesuit priests. He had some things to say about properly forming priests – or deforming them. Among other things, he said:

-“Some priestly formation programs run the risk of educating in the light of overly clear and distinct ideas, and therefore to act within limits and criteria that are rigidly defined a priori, and that set aside concrete situations,” Overly clear?? I must admit this is the first time I ever heard that phrase! Now the phrase, “overly ambiguous” makes perfect sense – but “overly clear”? Are we hearing some kind of Freudian slip here? What does he think of the Ten Commandments? “Thou shalt not commit adultery” seems to be quite clear to me and most certainly does define set limits and criteria. Do these Jesuits think the Ten Commandments should be rendered the Ten Guidelines? As far as these “concrete situations” that don’t fall within the “limits and criteria”? There’s a word for them, as old as revelation itself – sin.

-“Many people leave the confessional disappointed. Not because the priest is bad, but because the priest doesn’t have the ability to discern situations, to accompany them in authentic discernment.” Let me take a stab at translating this glop. “Ability to discern situations” means the knack for engaging in “situation ethics” and/or Amoralis Lamentia mental gymnastics to justify heinous sins while deluding the poor soul into thinking that he/she is acting virtuously while in reality they are damning their immortal souls. However, in the case of a priest who actually understands that he is “alter Christus” and who actually cares for immortal souls enough to rebuke the sinner, well, the sinner who is unrepentant can be “disappointed” that his/her sin isn’t being condoned.

-And we continue.. “In life not all is black on white or white on black. The shades of grey prevail in life.” How many “shades of grey” are there? Dare I guess “fifty”? And why, oh why, do they prevail? How about God’s clear, unambiguous commands “prevailing”, at least within His Church?

In another account of the meeting, we see other quotes from the pope. For instance, he said, “Young people speak directly. They want the truth or at least a straight response.” But as we saw in the preceding quotes, he wants priests to be trained to offer them anything but direct truth – or maybe offer them progressive flim-flam while calling it truth. Talk about wolves dressed as shepherds.

All this is merely one of the logical outcomes of Amoralis Lamentia. In addition to prayer, expect more of this and be prepared to refute it.

This one really hits home for me because I was a victim of this malady for so many years when I was rebelling against Church teaching on contraception.

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, people whose minds are muddled from sin seek out priests who will enable the behavior. We find out where they are and drive to their parish to listen to their lies so we can keep on doing what we’re doing without guilt.

The secular culture hates guilt because it drives you crazy until you stop the bad behavior.

If you have an affinity to be attracted to ordained men who will relieve you of guilt, your soul is so far gone it has affected your intellect. The only fix for that is the Sacraments of Confession and the Eucharist.

Most of the priests I would go out of my way to use as a shepherd would not absolve the use of contraception. I could never quite get comfortable with it, but I continued to put my salvation in their care.

The one thing that saved me was the consistent voice of St. John Paul II. With the Pope constantly articulating Church teaching, I eventually knew I was being lied to.

I still went to the bad priests to hear the lies but each time St. John Paul II spoke about contraception, my skepticism grew.

I remember the last time a priest tried to tell me he wasn’t going to absolve me. I interrupted him with “Don’t you dare try to tell me…etc. He obliged and absolved me and I walked out of the counterfeit church for good.

I think this is why the disordered nonsense coming out of Pope Francis is so disturbing to me. Our people are being hoodwinked from the Chair of Peter.

Just listen to this irrational bag of lies he is selling:

“The Church today needs to grow in the ability of spiritual discernment,” the pope told the Polish Jesuits, whom he met with during his visit to Krakow as he led a week-long Catholic festival called World Youth Day.

“Some programs of priestly formation run the risk of educating in the light of overly clear and distinct ideas, and therefore to act within limits and criteria that are rigidly defined in advance and that set aside concrete situations: this must be done, this mustn’t be done,” the pope said during the July 30 meeting he had with some 30 Jesuits.

Francis said that priests who weren’t taught the “wisdom of discernment” during their formation years, later “find themselves in difficulty in accompanying the life of so many young people and adults.”

“And many people leave the confessional disappointed. Not because the priest is bad, but because the priest doesn’t have the ability to discern situations, to accompany them in authentic discernment,”

express remorse to God for your lack of faith, your fall to temptation – and receive the gift of Sanctifying Grace to help resist temptation.

If a person is confessing a sin in the confessional, they know the behavior is an offense to God and the proper response to the activity is to receive Sanctifying Grace.

There’s a spark of Sanctifying Grace already at work and we now have a Pope who is asking priests to throw a wet blanket on it by deliberately befuddling them and withholding absolution.

That’s what the Holy Father is talking about here. If there was ever a statement that defines the trajectory he is imposing upon the people we love, this is it. What harm could ever be done by absolution and the power in Sanctifying Grace? What on earth would ever posses the man to instruct priests to obstruct it?

I agree Tom. I’ve always worried about the souls that will be lost because of these apostates.
But beside continuing our prayers and fasting for the conversion of the Vatican II church and its hierarchy, and for the hope of the souls that these people put in jeopardy there really isn’t much more that we can do.